The Tablet

For the weekly Catholic newspaper published in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, please see The Tablet (Diocese of Brooklyn).

For the American Jewish general interest online magazine, please see Tablet Magazine.

The Tablet

Editor	Catherine Pepinster
Categories	Catholicism
Frequency	Weekly (except Christmas)
Total circulation (2011)	20,976
First issue	May 16, 1840
Company	Tablet Publishing Company
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Website	www.thetablet.co.uk
ISSN	0039-8837

The Tablet is a Catholic international weekly review published in London. Contributors to its pages have included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) and Pope Paul VI (as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini).

Ownership

The Tablet was launched in 1840 by a Quaker convert to Catholicism, Frederick Lucas, just 10 years before the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. It is the second-oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after The Spectator (which was founded in 1828).

For the first 28 years of its life, The Tablet was owned by the Catholic laity. In 1868, Fr (later Cardinal) Herbert Vaughan, who had founded the only British Catholic missionary society, the Mill Hill Missionaries, purchased the journal just before the First Vatican Council that defined papal infallibility. At his death he bequeathed the journal to the Archbishops of Westminster, the profits to be divided between Westminster Cathedral and the Mill Hill Fathers.

The Tablet was owned by successive Archbishops of Westminster for 67 years. In 1935, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Hinsley sold the journal to a group of Catholic laymen. In 1976 ownership passed to The Tablet Trust, a registered charity.

Editors since 1935

From 1936 to 1967 the editor was Douglas Woodruff, formerly of The Times, a historian and reputed wit whose hero was Hilaire Belloc. His wide range of contacts, and his knowledge of international affairs, made the paper, it was said, essential reading in embassies around the world. He restored the fortunes of The Tablet, which had declined steeply. For many years (1938–1961) he was assisted by Michael Derrick, who after the Second World War was often acting editor.

Woodruff was followed as editor by the publisher and, like Woodruff, part owner Tom Burns, who served from 1967 to 1982. Burns, a conservative in his political views, was a progressive on church matters, firmly in favour of the Vatican II church reforms. A watershed came in 1968, when The Tablet took an editorial stance at odds with Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, which restated the traditional teaching against artificial contraception.

Burns was followed by the BBC producer John Wilkins, who had been Burns's assistant from 1967 to 1971. Under his editorship the journal's political stance was seen as centre-left. The paper continued to have a distinctive voice, consistently advocating further changes in the Church's post-Vatican II life and doctrine. Circulation climbed steadily throughout Wilkins's 21-year tenure. He retired at the end of 2003.

Catherine Pepinster, formerly executive editor of The Independent on Sunday, was appointed as the first female editor of The Tablet at the beginning of 2004. She has said that the journal will continue to provide a forum for "progressive, but responsible Catholic thinking, a place where orthodoxy is at home but ideas are welcome".^{[citation needed]}

Criticism

The Tablet has been the target of criticism from Church traditionalists. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver accused The Tablet of displaying “unhelpful and badly informed opinions” on American domestic issues – and knowingly misrepresenting Catholic teaching on abortion. Chaput was specifically referring to an editorial in the Tablet titled "U.S. bishops must back Obama," which claimed that America's bishops "have so far concentrated on a specifically Catholic issue - making sure state-funded health care does not include abortion - rather than the more general principle of the common good." In response, Chaput stated: "No system that allows or helps fund - no matter how subtly or indirectly -- the killing of unborn children, or discrimination against the elderly and persons with special needs, can bill itself as "common ground." Doing so is a lie." "Health-care reform is vital. That's why America's bishops have supported it so vigorously for decades. They still do. But fast-tracking a flawed, complex effort this fall, in the face of so many growing and serious concerns, is bad policy. It's not only imprudent; it's also dangerous."

Links

• The Tablet Official Website